January 2, 2012 21:25 by ckincincy
Inspired by @sadukie I am going to list out my applications on my Window’s phone.
I’ve had a Windows phone for over a year now, I’ve actually had 3 different models. I first had the HTC Surround, while it was a good phone I just didn’t see the need for the speaker setup. Then I went to the LG Quantum because it has a physical keyboard. Now, after my move to Verizon I am on the HTC Trophy.
I’ve owned an iPhone for 2 years, and when the commercial says “there is an app for that”… they aren’t kidding. The application list for the iPhone is impressive. Unfortunately the same could not be said for the Windows Phone 7. It had an OK list of applications, but not one that would blow you away.
However, the applications available have seemed to hit a level to where it does everything I need a phone to do.
I love the way the phone works. It just seems to flow so much better than the iPhone. I grew to hate my iPhone by time I got rid of it. I’ve had the Windows Phone for over a year and have no real complaints about the operating system.
Enough of the chatter. Below is my list of applications.
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Utilities
Adobe Reader – Pretty much a must own if you want to view PDF’s.
WinMilk – A nice little to-do list for the phone. Though the upgrades to OneNote in Mango somewhat make this a little less needed. I do prefer the UI on WinMilk though.
BandWidth – Allows you to see how fast your internet connection is.
QR Code Reader – Ever see those crazy blocks with all the lines in them? Yep, this decodes them!
Flashlight-X – Ad supported flashlight application. Uses the camera’s flash for a true flashlight experience.
CardStar – One of my favorite apps. Allows you to get rid of all those pesky reward and membership cards.
ConnectivityShortcuts – One of the new things available with Mango. Allows you to create a shortcut directly to a few settings. Great if you find yourself turning them off or on
Remote Desktop – So I’ve yet to try this, just downloaded tonight… but if it does what it says, it is pretty much the only one available.
SkyDrive – Gives you some access to your SkyDrive. Not a bad application to have, even if much of the functionality of this application is already built into the phone.
VNC Connect – Standard VNC application.
Games
Shuffle Party – A fun game to waste some time. You can bowl, play the classic game, or an obstacle course.
Xbox Companion – This integrates with your XBox and allows you to control the main screen a bit. While a cool thing to try out once, not something I found incredibly useful. Especially since I have the Kinect.
Backgammon Pro – An ad supported version of Backgammon. Fun game to learn!
Flush – I was a little hesitant to put this on the list as I found it an OK game, but some of the levels just don’t seem possible!
Physi Bricks – A fun game that takes gravity and certain dynamics of the different types of balls you have to throw at the bricks.
Blocked In Free – The “classic” boxed in game. Just a fun way to waste some time.
Minesweeper – The classic Minesweeper game with a few twist. Loved earning achievements.
Media/News
Amazon Kindle – Just your basic Kindle application.
ESPN ScoreCenter – An application to allow you to monitor scores and sports news. The navigation can be a little bit hard to grasp, but it does the job.
iHeartRadio – Access to all of the Clear Channel radio stations.
INRIX Traffic – This is a really well thought out application. It combines user reported crashes with crashes reported through official means. Has helped me avoid problems several times.
Last.fm – Your typical Last.fm application. If you use Last.fm, this is what you want.
Spotify – Spotify is the new kid on the block in the USA. It is a nice application to interface with their service.
The Weather Channel – Out of all the weather applications, this is the one I liked the best.
Retail
Amazon Mobile – A nice way to interact with Amazon. Allows on the fly price comparison along with a lot more.
eBay – This application was one of the most surprising for me. Just an all around good application to work with eBay on your mobile phone.
Pizza Hut – This one is relatively new. I used the iPhone version several times and the Windows version appears to be a good port.
Personal
Bible – LifeChurch.tv kind of owns this market and its no difference on the Windows Phone. Top of the line application.
Google Integration
Flux – I’ve tried a lot of Google Reader applications. This one has been the best by a lot.
GoVoice – The best Google Voice application around. It went through a moment where I thought it was going to be abandoned by the developer, but he has started to work on it again recently. It just works!
Social Media
MoTweets Pro – I’ve been giving this a shot. It is a paid application, but overall I like it. It is really for heavy Twitter users as it allows for support of multiple accounts. It also seems to have Facebook integration.
Twitter – The official Twitter application. More than sufficient!
Developer Unlocked
I recently “developer unlocked” my phone using ChevronWP7. Unfortunately the “jailbreak” story in Windows Phone is still very new and not well developed. Once this is a bit more mainstream the ‘black market’ applications available will rock. Since I am unlocked I am able to “side load” some applications onto my phone.
Screen Capturer – One of the things I really missed from the iPhone was the ability to take a screen grab. This fills that gap.
Built In
The podcast setup is really nice. I have subscribed to many technical and personal podcast and they just show up on the phone when new episodes show up.
Missing
Chipotle – Enough said!
Facebook – There is actually a Facebook application, but it is buggy when you scroll down. When I moved to Verizon and my new phone I didn’t bother to install the app. I just went to the mobile version as my primary method. There is, however, extensive integration with Facebook on the main operating system.
July 25, 2011 19:40 by ckincincy
This is not another post about how Google+ works or another post about why Google+ is better than <insert social media platform here>. This is, however, a note that I’m abandoning Twitter for Google+… for now.
I’ve “left” Twitter a few times. Ultimately I don’t get it. 140 characters has always seemed way to small for me. While many, maybe even most, updates are fine for 140. What about the replies and post that aren’t? It becomes some disjointed mess of last reply first reading.
So do me a favor, come follow me on Google+. I’d like to follow you.
September 9, 2010 23:53 by ckincincy
For those that know me, you know that I am no fan of Google. I don't trust them in many ways. I don't trust them with my personal information and I don't trust them to keep features I like or come to rely on. They have a history of launching the next greatest thing, to only kill it within the first two years.
I've been able to stop using Google for most things. With one exception, email. The reason being that Yahoo and Hotmail are each missing one feature. The ability to use my own smtp server.
Both services will allow me to 'send mail as' other accounts, but it is really an email hack. The actual from email would be the Yahoo or Hotmail address of the account. The Reply to would then be changed to my personal email. The problem with this is two fold.
1. Other web servers will sometime see this as spam.
2. Sometimes the "from" that the reciepient see's is, "From user@hotmail.com sent on behalf of user@example.com". I don't want people to see my main service email.
So, Hotmail and Yahoo... do me a favor and give me this one feature. I'm ready to jump ship, I just need your help.
April 9, 2009 19:47 by ckincincy
Recently I have entered a contest to lose the most weight at my work. Being the geek that I am, I created an online spreadsheet using Google Documents. Unbelievably, I found a very basic error in Google Documents. You can see from the image below (click for larger) that I have two columns that are generated from a very simple formula: B2-B3, basically 263.4 – 254.9 and the answer is 8.5. But Google Documents says its 8.49999999999997. A very odd error to see.
February 10, 2009 00:00 by ckincincy
OK, this isn’t political. A few years back a lot of folks implemented a ‘google bomb’ to tie George Bush’s White House profile with the term ‘miserable failure’. Turns out with the change of a website, this bomb now ties to Barack Obama.
The old saying to treat others as you want to be treated comes to mind.
However Obama has something that Bush doesn’t. Friends in Google. Took them 4 years to fix it for Bush. Took them DAYS! to fix it for Obama.
My friend Microsoft gets a lot of flack for being ‘evil’, yet Google has gotten a pass for far to long.
January 23, 2009 03:00 by ckincincy
Hat tip to Chris Blankenship for this one.
As a developer you get dumb questions from newbies (and experienced people as well) all the time. Things that you know with about 60 seconds of effort could have been answered without bothering you.
In comes the best way ‘teach a person to fish’ rather than give them a fish.
Instead of giving the person the answer, you send them a link that shows them how to use Google!
August 22, 2008 03:00 by ckincincy
One thing I've hated about gMail is its inability to white list my address book, or certain emails.
Well finally they are getting close. They now allow us to save certain emails.
I used to get an email from WebProNews, some junk but occasionally some good SEO in it. But it ends up in my spam bucket:
Now I can go to Settings -> Filters and create a new filter that matches this email address and then on the next page I am given this option:
And now I will get that email. Now I just need the option to white list my address book.
July 9, 2008 03:00 by ckincincy
If you are a .NET developer you've faced the issues I've faced when using a major search engine... results that don't really fit your problem.
But Google has an interesting feature that allows you to create a custom search engine. You define the sites it searches.
Dan Appleman has put together a site www.searchdotnet.com that searches his list of .NET sites and overall the results I get from this site are pretty good.
June 8, 2008 15:35 by ckincincy
So I am in the process of transferring my church 's website from www.bataviachurch.org to www.lifestreamcc.org since we changed our name on June 1st.
Along with this change it was required of me to get a new FeedBurner link for our sermons since I had 'BataviaChurchOfChristSermons' originally.
I figured I'd give a few simple names a try first.... and you won't believe what worked.
http://feeds.feedburner.com/streamingsermons
Thats it! I was stunned that out of 1.7 million feeds that this wasn't already taken. But it wasn't!
Very cool.
March 23, 2008 16:42 by ckincincy
Well I think I am finally dropping FoxMarks.
FoxMarks is a Firefox Extension that synchronizes your bookmarks between machines. It was a beautiful extension until version 2 was released. Version two has been a train wreck, and for the longest time I just kept running version 1. However I quickly grew tired of the notification that my FoxMarks extension was out of date, so I finally decided to give version 2 one last try.
Needless to say it failed bad. Its a shame to see such a good product become such a bad product.
So I did a search for a replacement option and find out about Google Browser Sync. Syncs not only my bookmarks, but also my cookies, history, saved passwords, and open tabs and windows. BEAUTIFUL!
Now when I switch from my work PC to my home PC I keep many of my settings.